Lecture summary: This lecture examines the treatment of marine genetic resources (MGR) in the negotiations and the text of the new Treaty on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ). The Treaty provides a coherent governance framework for MGR including an unexpected techno-fix to the most longstanding problem of biodiversity governance, some normative novelty on principles, and a trendsetting approach to valuation of aggregate usage of genetic resources. Yet, this painstakingly formed...

Lecture summary: From European colonialism to the ‘post’colonial constellation, modern international law has developed in parallel with the changing legal forms of industrialised countries’ access to the natural resources of the global South. Following this development, we can see how imperial environmentalism was translated to the transnational law of natural resources. The historic perspective also highlights that the specific ambivalence of colonial and postcolonial environmental...

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture was given by Prof Beth Simmons, University of Pennsylvania. Summary: The Golden Age of globalization has reached an end in the popular and political imagination. In its place has...

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture was given by Prof Beth Simmons, University of Pennsylvania. Summary: The Golden Age of globalization has reached an end in the popular and political imagination. In its place has...

The Hersch Lauterpacht Memorial Lecture is an annual three-part lecture series given in Cambridge to commemorate the unique contribution to the development of international law of Sir Hersch Lauterpacht. These lectures are given annually by a person of eminence in the field of international law. This year's lecture was given by Prof Beth Simmons, University of Pennsylvania. Summary: The Golden Age of globalization has reached an end in the popular and political imagination. In its place has...

Lecture summary: This research examines international law’s longstanding entanglement with communications infrastructure. There is increasing concern regarding the rise of private global power in the form of global digital platforms and their model of information capitalism. This paper responds by focusing on historical connections between international law and infrastructure as a means of examining their relationship in the global communications context. This reveals a longer trajectory to...

Lecture summary: In this talk, Lucas Lixinski examines the erasure of Indigenous perspectives from the literature on the turn to history in international law. Considering the turn to history’s promise to offer alternative imaginations by recovering history, it is somewhat surprising and disappointing that so much of this turn is narrated from the perspective of colonisers. Lixinski unpacks the implications of this turn to Indigenous agency and victimhood, and leverages alternative retellings...

Lecture summary: After the conclusion of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and the entry into force of its Article 108, the subject of maritime crimes has experienced many important developments. Indeed, at present, States have to deal with criminal actions which did not exist in the classical International Law of the Sea. Relevant examples include kidnapping and hostage-taking at sea, maritime terrorism offences, the smuggling of migrants by sea, illicit oil and fuel...

The LCIL and Cambridge International Law Journal (CILJ) are pleased to invite you to the LCIL-CILJ Annual Lecture Lecture summary: Recent pathbreaking trade agreements empower trade policymakers to target foreign companies in novel ways and to police corporate due diligence in global supply chains rather than seek to change foreign government behavior as used to be their purview. This repurposing of our trade enforcement system has the power to transform dramatically the global commercial...

Lecture summary: For better or for worse, the ‘English school’ or ‘British tradition’ of international law has eluded systematization or definition. The lecture pursues the argument that it is possible to identify clear synergies in the mainstream legal method of British international lawyers, focusing on British approaches to the doctrine of self-defence. It should not be surprising that this method follows in the common law tradition, displaying the tradition's three key hallmarks of (1)...

Lecture summary: The Energy Charter Treaty was concluded in 1994 on the assumption that fossil fuels could continue to be used for the foreseeable future. This article examines how ECT contracting parties can now withdraw from this treaty for climate change reasons without being subject to its 'sunset' clause, which protects existing investments for 20 years. It evaluates several strategies, including amendment and inter se agreements, and withdrawal on the basis of a fundamental change of...

Lecture Summary: This lecture will discuss recent developments in the UN Climate Regime, focusing in particular on the mismatch between the increasing emphasis on temperature goals and target-setting under the Paris Agreement and its treatment of equity and fairness in delivering these goals and targets. Lavanya Rajamani is a Professor of International Environmental Law, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, and Yamani Fellow in Public International Law, St Peter's College, Oxford. Lavanya...

Lecture summary: Just over a year ago, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) sought public comments on a bold and thoughtfully framed rule proposal for the enhancement and standardization of climate-related disclosure. It was a move that signaled to many that the US was finally responding to the global shift amongst investors and asset managers toward the integration of ESG data into fundamental value analysis. Today, however, as ESG issues in the US have become politically...

Lecture 2: 'Exploring Nexus' A series of three lectures by Dr. B.S.Chimni, Distinguished Professor of International Law, O.P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he was for over three decades Professor of International Law, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Between 2004-2006 he was the Vice Chancellor of the W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has been a Visiting Professor at Brown and Tokyo universities, the Graduate Institute, Geneva...

Lecture 1: 'Mapping the Terrain' A series of three lectures by Dr. B.S.Chimni, Distinguished Professor of International Law, O.P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he was for over three decades Professor of International Law, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Between 2004-2006 he was the Vice Chancellor of the W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has been a Visiting Professor at Brown and Tokyo universities, the Graduate Institute,...

Lecture 3: 'Reframing Doctrines' A series of three lectures by Dr. B.S.Chimni, Distinguished Professor of International Law, O.P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he was for over three decades Professor of International Law, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Between 2004-2006 he was the Vice Chancellor of the W.B. National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata. He has been a Visiting Professor at Brown and Tokyo universities, the Graduate Institute,...

Lecture summary: International economic law binds the state in relation to markets – most prominently with respect to cross-border trade in goods and services (trade) and the cross-border flow of capital (investment). The core tension to be managed in treaty design involves the balance between economic disciplines and the sovereign’s reserved regulatory authority – between liberalization and policy space. The trade regime has been fairly successful in striking this balance, while the...

Lecture Summary: The survival of our planet requires swift and targeted climate policies to adapt, mitigate and repair. Scientists and political elites acknowledge the urgency to reduce our reliance on coal and fossil fuels to achieve the necessary reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Academics have been studying the impacts of investment treaty protections on climate action and argued that investment treaties raise the cost of climate action, financially and via regulatory chill and limit...

Lecture summary: United Nations (UN) and several UN Agencies have started to use behavioural sciences in order to achieve their policy goals, including for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). While it is to be appreciated that insights on actual behavior inform policy making of international actors, they raise scientific and normative considerations warranting caution. First, for those considerations it matters, who the acting and the targeted actors are, that is, where and for...

Lecture summary: It is alleged that the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT) embodied the victory of Sir Gerald Fitzmaurice’s preference to interpret treaties based on the “ordinary meaning of the words” over Sir Hersh Lauterpacht’s view that one instead should seek to ascertain the treaty parties’ “actual intentions.” But is that so? If, as VCLT Article 31(1) provides, the focus is to be on “the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the...

Lecture summary: After 1945, the United Nations – and international organizations (IOs) more generally – were widely embraced as the ideal, democratic means to resolve international conflicts and promote global welfare. Sharing this almost feverish enthusiasm, a Western-controlled International Court of Justice adopted a deferential attitude toward IOs. The law it developed exuded confidence in the impartiality of IOs, premised on an unquestioning assumption that their subjection to legal...

Lecture summary: It is widely recognised that there is a dearth of women judges sitting on international courts and tribunals. In this lecture, particular attention will be paid to the question of why the lack of judicial parity matters. It will be argued that the dearth of women judges is both symptom and cause of the highly gendered way in which international law and international institutions operate. The idea of the totemic judge of international law whose male gender is rendered...

Lecture summary: The lecture will explore the extent to which key normative and institutional responses to the challenges raised by the digital age are compatible with, or interact with, changes in key features of the existing international human rights law (IHRL) framework. Furthermore, it will be claimed that the IHRL framework is already changing, partly due to its interaction with digital human rights. This moving normative landscape creates new opportunities for promoting human rights in...

A series of three lectures by Benedict Kingsbury, New York University. Vice Dean and Murry and Ida Becker Professor of Law Director, Institute for International Law and Justice Faculty Director, Guarini Institute for Global Legal Studies. Benedict Kingsbury’s broad, theoretically grounded approach to international law closely integrates work in legal theory, political theory, and history. His current research focuses on infrastructure; global data law; and vaccines issues.